I once did a post on another blog on some places where you can listen to free music online. I thought it was a good idea, and that it would get me a lot of hits (and revenue) but I regret it now.

Today I did some research into free music, file sharing, uploading and downloading music, and the decrease in profits in the music industry. I got a lot of information on how downloading and listening to music for free online can hurt artists, and the entire music industry. Obviously one person isn’t going to make that much of a difference, but one person recommends another person and eventually everyone is doing what the first person with the great idea did. That is what happened with file sharing. This one guy came up with Napster, which made music freely available. Now millions of people around the world are downloading and streaming music on the Internet, both legally and illegally, and usually without the artist’s consent.

I know that in Canada it is legal to download music freely, but illegal to upload it. But either way it is hurting the music industry when you download songs without the approval of the people that made them. These artists need sales to make a living, just as many people here need traffic to make money off of their blog entries.

Well, I decided I’d try to help and listen to some new music made freely available by artists that just want to put a couple of songs on the ’Net to get their names out there. It’s canadianmusic.com, a site for budding Canadian artists. It also allows users to sign up and write a blog, or if you are a Canadian artist, you can create your own band pages.

Basically it’s pretty small, and not very well-known, but at least I can feel good about myself for not listening to music that is somewhat stolen from the creators, I am listening to music that was put there specifically for the users to listen for free.